65% of students in school today will work in jobs that don’t exist today.

38.1 million students from under-resourced communities won't have access to those jobs.

We’re on a mission to change that. 

ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITY

We give students access to the mindset, skills, and tools needed to launch a company and a legacy plan to change their communities for good. 

LEGACY
​INVESTING

We support and encourage the philanthropic initiatives of student entrepreneurs to better their local communities.

SUPPORT &
​CELEBRATION 

Students are supported and celebrated through coaching, mentorships, and the annual gala.

Upward Mobility in America

​We all want the same thing for our children – a shot at the American Dream.

In Charlotte and other Southern cities, poor children have the lowest odds of making it to the top income bracket of kids anywhere in the country. Why?

Data suggests that Charlotte is a dead-end for people trying to escape poverty.

“[The American Dream] is the idea that no matter where you start in life, you have a chance of climbing up the income ladder and becoming successful.” 
​RAJ CHETTY

Charlotte ranked dead last in an analysis of economic mobility in America’s 50 largest cities by the Equality of Opportunity Project, a team of researchers out of Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley led by Stanford’s Raj Chetty. Children born into the bottom 20 percent of Charlotte's income distribution had just a 4.4 percent chance of making it to the top 20 percent of the income distribution. Compared to a 12.9 percent chance for children in San Jose, California, and 10.8 percent change for children in Salt Lake City.

Rather than making it into Charlotte's middle class, poor children, who are majority black and Latino, are very likely to stay poor.

Read Charlotte Opportunity Initiative Report 2020

MORE OPTIONS FOR THE MOST INNOVATIVE AMONG US

We invite you to join this opportunity

Building Tomorrow's Leaders, Not Yesterday's Workers

Being successful in the coming decades will be much harder than for previous generations. People already change jobs every few years, industries morph constantly, and constant disruption is fast becoming the new normal.

The next generation will work with people from all over the world, they will encounter incredibly complex problems, they will be displaced, they will be isolated from their neighborhood friendship groups at times and they will have to navigate this fast-changing landscape using their whits. Entrepreneurial skills like pitching, pivoting and accessing resources beyond your control will be essential in everyone's working life.

1 IN 3
U.S. employers say they look for entrepreneurial experience in new hires.
Millennial Branding

​100%
of net new job creation in the U.S. comes from new business startups.
Kauffman Foundation

​37%
​of minority youth in the U.S. are currently unemployed.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

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